I tried to install ffmpeg in trusty/Ubuntu 14.04 and got the following message:

$sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package ffmpeg is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package 'ffmpeg' has no installation candidate

What is the output of: apt-cache search ffmpeg | grep "ffmpeg" If you don't see ffmpeg in the list of returned results, then something has gone wrong with your repo manager. For now, I'd suggest installing by building from source. Download from here.
–
wyasMar 11 '14 at 5:17

7 Answers
7

Latest news

FFmpeg and libav

libav from the Ubuntu repositories

Ubuntu started shipping the libav fork instead of FFmpeg in recent releases. If you installed the ffmpeg package, then you actually installed the libav-tools package and a program that told you to use avconv instead of ffmpeg in the future, giving the impression that ffmpeg is deprecated, which it is not.

The transitional ffmpeg package seems to have been removed from trusty/Ubuntu 14.04 (compare the package files listing for saucy and trusty of the source package).

So one option is to install the libav-tools package and use avconv instead (NB that this is not "mainline" FFmpeg but a prominent fork instead).

FFmpeg from a PPA on Launchpad

Another option is to use a PPA that provides FFmpeg. Please have a look at the FFmpeg download page for details of available PPAs and packages. You should check individual PPAs every once in a while if they are still up to date.

Install from source

Another option is to install FFmpeg dependency packages, then manually compile+install it from source.

Use static builds

While it may look a bit awkward from the packaging perspective, you could also use any static build from trusted sources. In my case I keep FFmpeg Windows 32-Bit and 64-Bit binaries along with x264-10-Bit binaries in a folder to run them in Wine or Windows whenever I need to.

The following is what I could find, when researching this topic. I haven't been following the development of both projects closely and it is not my intention to blame anyone. You as a reader shouldn't do either.

How did the fork happen?

Wikipedia states that the forked project as well as the initial release were announced on March 13th 2011, however there is a bit more that was going on.

Official announcements on libav.org

The following posts are from the news section (with the oldest in last):

August 09 2011

Updated on 12.09.2011.

For consistency with our new name we have renamed ffplay to avplay,
ffserver to avserver and ffprobe to avprobe. Their behavior is the
same, just the names were changed.

With ffmpeg (the command line tool) we decided to use this opportunity
to fix some longstanding usability problems, which involves breaking
compatibility. Therefore we have added a new tool named avconv which
is based on ffmpeg, but has a different (hopefully more powerful and
easier to use) syntax for some options. ffmpeg will be kept in its
current state for some time, so no scripts or frontends using it will
break. However it will not be developed further.

Differences between avconv and ffmpeg are:

[...]

Note that the avconv interface is not considered stable yet. More
incompatible changes may come in the following weeks. We will announce
here when avconv is stable.

And earlier in 2011:

Mar 18, 2011

We have just pushed another point release from our 0.6 release branch:
Libav 0.6.2. This is another maintenance-only release addressing two
security issues.

From now on, we will be using our new project name libav. But don't
worry, compared to the preceding release 0.6.1, the only functional
changes are the two security fixes for the VC1 and APE decoders. This
means that libav provides a painless drop-in replacement for existing
FFmpeg installations.

Moreover, we are proud to accompany this source release with
executables and libraries for the win32 platform. These binaries
include H.264 encoding using the bundled x264 library. Enjoy!

Distributors and system integrators are encouraged to update and share
their patches against our release branches.

Mar 17, 2011

We have just pushed another point release from our 0.5 release branch:
FFmpeg 0.5.4. This is another maintenance-only release that addresses
a number of security issues.

Distributors and system integrators are encouraged to update and share
their patches against our release branches.

March 13, 2011

We, as a group of FFmpeg developers, have decided to continue
developing FFmpeg under the name Libav. All existing infrastructure
will be transferred to the libav.org domain.

For now we are still reachable over FFmpeg's mailing lists and IRC
channels but we will migrate to libav.org counterparts. For a
transition period both the website and source might still contain
references to FFmpeg. These will disappear over time, except where
historically relevant.

February 24, 2011

FFmpeg development has moved to Git, and the SVN repository is no
longer updated. The SVN repository may be removed in a near future, so
you're recommended to use a Git repository instead.

The last revision committed to SVN was r26402 on 2011-01-19 and
replaced the svn:external libswscale with a standalone copy.

Note that FFmpeg development has in fact moved to a Git repository by now and that there are two Git repositories. See the corresponding projects download page.

@Seth Do you mean shipping of libav instead of FFmpeg or dropping of the transitional package? I found a mail that points to a Team Report from the Technical Board and and also added a link to the source package on launchpad where one can compare the saucy and trusty package listings, but I don't know the details.
–
LiveWireBTApr 4 '14 at 2:33

3

I might move the how to install ffmpeg from ppa to the end. As a "If you're really in to swimming against the tide, and you already read all these things... then you can do this." Instead of putting it all the way at the front. Like, encourage using things that are in main/uni/multi if you can avoid PPAs.
–
hbdgafApr 4 '14 at 20:58

1

Could you make an excerpt instead, it's very long to read.
–
BraiamApr 9 '14 at 0:05

3

@Braiam reading is a lovely skill. There is also a short answer below, too.
–
Benjamin RAug 10 '14 at 7:29

That's basically the same information I posted in my answer, but without the warning that should always be given before advising users to install packages from PPAs. Also there is the possibility that someone else will take over maintenance of an ffmpeg PPA in the future or that the PPA will just be moved or renamed. Therefore linking to official instructions is the right way, as it reduces redundancy and maintenance effort.
–
LiveWireBTJun 2 '14 at 19:37

That is not the PPA listed on FFmpeg.org as the current official PPA. (Also the project member maintaining the PPA may change, that's the reason why I decided to not includ instructions on how to add a certain PPA.) Also if you look at this PPA it updates a whole lot more packages than just ffmpeg.
–
LiveWireBTJun 2 '14 at 19:10

FFMPEG package was removed since some time now from Debian repositories. There's still an ongoing debate about including the package again in the repositories. Ubuntu as Debian derivative, depends of the decitions made upstream. Since long ago, the package was just empty with an dependency to libav. This was changed in 12 May 2012 when the package was dropped and removed from the archives: